Traditionally, the Press-Citizen Editorial Board offers up a slate of endorsements of midterm election candidates after sitting down and talking with them individually, weighing the merits of their plans and policies and giving the nod to the candidates best-poised to deliver on pressing state and local issues.

Historically, the Board has endorsed candidates from both major political parties, with an eye toward maintaining much-needed checks-and-balances in both Washington and the statehouse.

This November, after careful and deliberate consideration, the Board is breaking with tradition and history.

The day the Board last met as a group to discuss endorsement plans, headlines blared news of pipe bombs delivered to critics of President Donald Trump. Shortly after, a gunman espousing rhetoric echoing that of some of the “fine people” that President Trump excused after the Charlottesville tragedy, shot and killed 11 at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. On the heels of that news, the president announced plans to deploy the United States military to our southern border to “protect” the nation from huddled masses of asylum seekers and war refugees. And just this past Tuesday, the president announced his intention to disregard the plain language of the United State Constitution by issuing an Executive Order to end birthright citizenship.

It is for these norm-breaking outrages and scores of others– unprecedented, unerringly wrong-headed and unrelenting – that we are instead urging all voters to turn in a straight-party ballot for Democrats on Nov. 6.

This is not an issue of mere disagreement with policy and direction. It is an issue of grave moral and ethical import.

The Republican party of the United States has allowed its proud history to be hijacked by a leader who gleefully spreads lies and dangerous conspiracy theories, malevolent rhetoric, barely disguised racist dog whistles and calls the media “the enemy of the people.” Women, Mexicans, the disabled, the transgender, the poor, African-Americans – almost any single subset of the American populace not straight, white and reasonably wealthy – has been targeted by this President.

And the rank and file Republicans – up and down the ballot – have either stood silently by or issued only the faintest, mildest condemnations of the President’s words and actions, fearing the wrath of his political base and Twitter account.

We know, for a fact, that there are many Republican candidates with smart ideas, strong ethics and a healthy vision for moving America forward. But until they can show they love their country more than their reelection chances and start challenging the hatred churned out daily by their party’s standard bearer, we cannot in good conscience support any of them in this election cycle.

It is no longer tenable to give Republicans a pass as party leaders look the other way and say, “That’s just Trump being Trump.”

Not only are the enablers allowing the GOP to lurch in the wrong direction for its long-term future success and standing, but the party is now firmly traveling a reverse path on the arc of human history.

We make this unusual endorsement acknowledging the massive imperfections of the other major US political party as well. Inspired, perhaps, by the norm-breaking of the party-in-power, Democrats are also now too often traveling down the path of incivility and “us-versus-them” rhetoric. We are under no illusion that Democrats – if granted a majority in at least one branch of government – will or even can “fix” everything. But at this point, we are in a triage situation and someone needs to stop the bleeding.

We should remember that great men and women from both political parties have led this nation before. At the moment in history when the nation was closest to being torn apart, a Republican leader spoke words at Gettysburg that inspired us to heal and unite:

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Those words, spoken by President Lincoln, endure not simply because of their eloquence, but because of their humanity. It’s time to listen to our better angels. It’s time to reject hate, division and the politics of fear. We are not the hopelessly divided America that President Trump depicts. We are still the nation that inspired the Statue of Liberty, and at least for the moment, we completely reject the party that has abandoned the principle inscribed on its base.

Until that party willingly decides to disavow President Trump's divisive and disturbing language, return to its principles and demonstrate its ability to govern for all the people, it is our view their vote has not been earned.

This endorsement is a consensus​ of the Press-Citizen editorial board.